2016 Year of the Present.

On a temperate late August day our Buick was packed tightly with all our conceived needs for the adventures which would await. I had recently delved into a passion I’m still earning the confidence to pursue: writing.

With a GoPro set up to time lapse all to come in our great road trip westward, the lens pointed at Indian Wells Beach; my beach. The one in Amagansett that I’d stroll to as a kid before I got my license. And westward we drove. I saw more of America than I’d have dreamed of, literally— I’m not sure that I ever grew up dreaming of seeing this giant nation. As a born New Yorker, I’d somehow turned my back, only interested with passing through Customs. How foolish.

I’ve seen magnificence. There is true wild beauty in this country. There is true kindness among the masses. There are congenial downtown watering holes serving up their own brews on Main Streets across America. There are long stretches, longer than you can imagine with boundless views of empty landscape. Mountainside roads edge along abrupt plummets, a consequence to any wrong turn. Eternal summer fades into early snowfall and back to desert again. It’s a vast, historic monument to Earth. Like our time lapse video, in an instant we’re back in a familiar place greeting January 1st. My memories are still so vivid and recent, yet somehow the past four months are over in a blink.

At times I felt homesick, very homesick. There are also, of course disenchanting towns, places where all the definitions of value in New York some how fall flat. But then, a new place awaited with so much glory and surprise the lame or forgettable, was forgotten. With my return, also begs the question of what’s next? It’s at times daunting, scary, something worthy of procrastination while I am in the midst of so many discoveries. But what happens once I’m still, if ever I am. For once, the answer is not so much clear, as it is ripe.

I must write.

I have thought of every excuse for why I shouldn’t, convinced myself that no one reads nor cares what I’ve written and thus rejected the blank page in angst. I’ve come up with great career opportunities to pursue in line with some of the things I’ve become passionate about along the way, such as supporting the national parks, corporate social responsibility, selling goods from artisans I’ve discovered along the way in a bar-café-bookshop — and these careers may very well suit me in the future.

But today, I must write.

I want to share the world I’ve come to know, not only in my four months on the road, but my years abroad, and a child of our own caput mundi.

2015 has been a year of building new habits. I’m a runner. I’m a writer. I tell myself I can. I’m dedicated to becoming the person I want to be.

2016 is a year of transformation. I will leave my twenties behind in the winter. My name will change in the fall. I like to think of 2016 as the year of the present, for there’s no time like it. I woke up this morning to Guy Lombardo’s “Enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think,” strumming through my head; morbid, I know.

But there really is no time like the present. It’s time to live out, and type up, the very dreams inside my head. I’m determined to reach out to publications where I may have previously felt unworthy. I’ve begun my first book focused on my American travels which I aim to complete in 2016. And running, I’ll keep on keeping on.